IMHO a plain look at the attributes of elan vital that cannot be built into computational machinery (except on a shallow, tawdry emulative basis) is revealing.

Understanding
Intent
Sense of Being
Ability to create a vision of reality not previously recorded.

Hell even the ability to genuinely "decide" (not reach a binary conclusion but actually postulate a future of some degree).

These somehow are not things any robot has been able to acheive. Not to mention the sense of aesthetics, justice, and the abililty to see other viewpoints.

Our long and successful history as mechanics and investigators of electromechanical phenomena has committed us to continue to seek models that prove out on those terms, and so we will continue seeking a brain-from-circuits model as the whole answer to being and consciousness. IMHO, this is flagrant ignoral of a whole range of phenomena that does not fit the hypothesis and is dropped from the equation. As far as I am concerned this is just bad science at worst, or perhaps just deferred science at best.

A